Underground Alien

I am very lonely. The last few months my alienation has been increasing, as my IRL friends moved out of town, and the digital contexts I participated in disintegrated. The only people I talk to are my colleagues, over voice call, as I’m working from home, and all we talk about is work. At the same time I am doing better than ever in other ways: having a steady income has really lifted a lot of stress and anxiety off of me, and it feels like I am more clear sighted w.r.t. what I am doing with my art than I have been. Maybe disillusioned is the word, though I am not entirely, but there is a sense that I’ve fallen back into something more humble, to just paint. The more grandiose visions I had seem overblown, I feel I didn’t live up to it enough to justify entertaining them at this point. At the same time I am yearning for that overarching project, that total art encompassing work that gathers up the here-and-there stuff I am doing. Also I feel like I am not reaching anyone, more than before it feels like I have no audience. Part of it is surely that I stopped posting on Instagram, not by design but because it’s just so awkward, stakes are high, it’s like I never have something good enough to post. Twitter on the other hand I post too much, incomprehensive and hysterical, deleting and posting again and being set of in a negative spiral from the lack of interactions.

Social media really has been a big culprit for me recently, yet it’s the only hope I have of having a bit of reach at the moment.On one level I’ve sort of decided to bide my time, to do a targeted effort towards local galleries and the like - I have a few paintings in the works that I know have the potential to break through, they are clearer and more controlled than what I’ve done before, less chaotic. They are not grand works like EMANANCEA or such, but they don’t have to be. This is probably my general target at the moment, even if I often forget about it: if I can just finish up these works - works of wood and clay and paint - then I am in a position to finally make a move. To do the grandiose speculation - to branch of into weird theory and musical and intermedial works of unclear merit I first need to establish myself with what I know best, where my 10 000+ hours have been invested (where could I be at this point? 50K ? It’s not unthinkable).

So that is where I am at. Alone but at work. I’m sober and I live fairly decently. I don’t read much, which is unfortunate, but I listen to audiobooks. Plato, the Bible, Blake. If I just keep this going, maybe stop throwing up my guts on any kind of feed, then I’ll be alright. For you who is reading this, thank you for taking your time, I love you.

/David 12:14, 05-12-2020